Monday, January 17, 2011

Lonely Truck

From "A County Seat Calendar The talk of the town of Wilmington, Ohio, day by day, through one hundred and seventy-five years – Three hundred and sixty-five short tales of triumph and disaster, crime and detection, great expectations, sober practices, extravagant follies, coincidence, passion, thrift, politics, hogs, patriotism, sentimentality, heroism, and love.

January 1, 1824 – Jeremiah Reynolds, a Chester Township schoolboy who grew up to be called the Father of American Exploration, publishes the "Wilmington Spectator." It lasts only a year because Reynolds prefers making news to writing it. A convert to Symmes' Hollow Earth Theory, he sails for the south pole to prove it, missing by eight degrees when ice blocks his way.

January 2, 1830 – Fire department comes cursorily into being with ordinance appointing two men to examine fireplaces. One of these is Warren Sabin, whose tavern is a common resting place for survey hunters. [Surveyors and hunters?] Sabin adds four or five log cabins to his tavern whereupon it is described as "a strange looking hotel," and one of Wilmington's first. Mr. Sabin will later be summed up as a man who "had the organ of hope very largely developed."

The picture below from the first January page (it's a weekly calendar) is captioned:Colossus of Roads: This lonely item said to be first truck in Clinton County. Other items from that week include:

January 3, 1883 – Jacob Spicer Leaming, the Clinton Countian who was the first real corn breeder in America, publishes his delightful narrative, "Corn and its Culture, by a Pioneer Corn Raiser with 60 Years Experience in the Cornfield."